Case Cover
Valhalla Knights
Case Cover
Game File
Publisher: Xseed Games
North America Release Date: April 17, 2007
Number of Players: 1 - 4
Wi-fi Mode: Ad-Hoc
I heard about this game when I was looking at the Japanese PSP games section from an online store. I had a rough idea what the game was from the Japanese screenshots. When I heard it coming to North America, I decided to look into more. After going through reviews & gameplay footages, I decided to get a copy. I couldn't get one until a month & a half later from my local EB Games store. I got an used copy since people had mixed reviews & feelings about it.
About the game
Valhalla Knights is an original RPG game for the PSP. It plays like a MMORPG game with a fantasy world setting where you can get up to six party members to do quests & complete the game's main story. It offers some customization on your characters' armour & weapons in terms of appearances. The firmware version required to play this game is 3.11.
Long ago, humans, elves, dwarfs, & halflings lived in harmony. It was only until the freed Dark Lord unleashed demons to disrupt this balance. The land is now plagued in darkness & is called "The Cursed Land". One day, a youth wakes up in this land with his/her memories gone. He/she goes out on a journey to restore his/her memory.
Graphics
The graphics are pretty good & makes good use of the PSP's capabilities. It's pretty realistic & the sceneries are very detailed. It's one of the best PSP games to present the system's capacities well. Even the characters up close are pretty good. As for movements, very smooth & flowing.
Music & Sounds
The sounds are pretty good as they were clean & crisp. I haven't notice any silly sounds in the game. All the sounds are on cue as well.
There are no voices in the game, which is kind of a letdown in some way. RPGs today all have voices now & it's kind of a surprise that this game is missing them. However, it can be somewhat of a benefit, at least for me, as some people don't like English dubs from Japanese based games.
The music has that ancient old feel to it. However, there isn't a lot of music from this game.
Gameplay
Basically, you go out there & do your quests. The game plays like an MMORPG type of game as you go out there battling monsters & collecting items. Some people would say this game is a hack & slash type & I'm pretty close on agreeing with that since you go out there & hack away at monsters with two attack buttons & one special attack button. However, the game is an action RPG & does contain RPG elements in it. But for the most part, the game is a dungeon crawler where you will be spending a lot of time levelling up your characters. Because the experience points are distributed evenly among your characters, it can be a pain if you have too many in your party. Most people prefer to have at most three members. This can make the game feel old very fast with the low experience points & same monsters. Some monsters are pretty tough & give very little experience points. This is a pain really.
The controls isn't too hard. But it can be hard to navigate at times. For the dungeon exploration part, I had a lot of troubles with the camera angle. Although pressing the R button would fix it up, it was still a mess on seeing where you would be going. The L button is no help at all even though you see from a first person's view. The battles are a little bit better. If you have problems aiming at your target, the R button will auto lock onto it for close range weapons while the L button is for long range. You just need to focus on your distance from there. The game is basically hacking & slashing from this point. However, you need to do some formations & character behaviours for your party member since they will act on their own as the game is in real time & you can't control so many players at once.
Because of the number of buttons used in this game, it may seem to be a big learning curve. However, it isn't. I managed to pick up the game without reading the instructions much. The battle part shows you what button is for what. It was actually straightforward when you stop & look at them carefully. As for the difficulty, it isn't hard at I thought. I've read about people getting owned by easy monsters when they started their first battle. It was the opposed affect for me. I don't know if it's because I picked up a priest right away as a lot of people & the game company suggests you in doing. But, the priest only healed me once & never herself out of 15 or so battles. I'm not much of a gamer as well. I did notice that I started to lose one of my characters in battle when I got to three characters. It's mainly because I advanced too fast & got that third character when my first two characters were higher levelled & managed to get some gold to buy another character. Because of the game's unique experience points distribution system, it's best to get your ideal number of party members as soon as possible.
The best thing about this game & it's selling point is the customization system. Although you can change the appearance of your characters with the weapons & armours, keep in mind the game isn't a fashion show. Each weapon & armour does have its strengths & weaknesses. You can't get carried away building a cool looking dwarf or a sexy looking elf & sacrifice attack & defense power just to get owned later on. Also, you can't change the physical appearance of your characters in terms of face, hairstyle, body structure, & colour. The body template is the same for everyone.
As for the game itself, you really need to spend a lot of time playing it. Level grinding to be able to kill bosses to advance & hunting for certain items in the way of farming. Although the game takes about 40 hours to complete from what I heard, you will probably spent more time leveling & farming out of those 40 hours & possibly more.
For gameplay, the action is pretty intense based on the timer & your life meter. Although it's fun, the game does have one flaw. It doesn't allow you to pause which I found surprising. To stop the action, you need to put the PSP into sleep mode. That's one major complaint from me.
The game does have lagging issues for the battle part, but it's not major lag. You can see the slowdown, but it doesn't hinder the game play much. I notice this when I have three party member going against a minimum of four big to medium sized enemies when the lag starts to occur.
As for loading, it's pretty fast. The transactions between dungeon exploring to battle mode & vice versa is smooth & quick. Pretty much like there is no loading at all. But the movement from dungeon to town is a bit long. About five seconds tops from what I experienced. The initial loading & save file loading are the longest. They take about 10 to 20 seconds long. Not a big deal really since you aren't in the middle of game play at this point in time.
As a portable game that was designed for the PSP, the saving feature isn't too bad. The actual saving is visiting the inn though. When you want to save the game anytime, you use the Temp Save Data feature. There is only one file for it, so you need to be careful about it. When you load a temp save, it will get erased afterwards. So if you die or lose one of your characters before doing another temp save after loading it, you need to use the actual game save which will land you back at the inn & probably lose all your good stuff. So, doing a lot of frequent temp saving is recommended in this game. Plus, keep in mind the game only allows one save game file. So you can't do multiple game saves. Backups must be done on your computer via file transfer.
The story is pretty simple once you hear it. Your main character is travelling to recover his/her memories with a guided voice leading you onto this journey. From what I read, the story looks quite deep when you progress more into the game. But basically, your character is the sibling of a famous hero that sealed the Dark Lord that has now broken his seal & you are trying to restore The Cursed Land. Interesting as it sounds, it was actually a letdown when you get to the ending. I was disappointed about it.
Extras, Bonuses, & Secrets
There's nothing really. Beat the game once & you have the option of making the monsters harder in the second round. I'm assuming you can keep your old equipment, items, levels, & party members here since I don't see how you can beat tough monsters with little party members & crappy equipment with a small budget.
Replay Value
It depends on this one. It's mainly dungeon crawling with level grinding on the side. If you can stand levelling up most of the time or like it, I can see these kind of people playing this for hours & hours. Even if you don't want to complete the story, you can be doing this most of the time. But if you don't like doing this, you will probably stop once completing the game & not go back to it for a long time possibly. This is what I did & plan to get back to it again in the future which may be months. Either way, you will not play it again for a long time. Aside from removing the main character from your party & having harder monster in the second round, these aren't very useful in replaying the game again.
Overall Conclusion
Valhalla Knights isn't for everyone. I'm one of those people that kind of like level grinding games that are action RPG based. So, I'm one of those that will enjoy the game during the first run. However, the game is a major turnoff to those that don't like to waste time just levelling up to go to the next stage or getting owned by so-called easy monsters very easily.
Valhalla Knights gets a score of 7/10 from me. The game can be addicting if you are one of those that like to customize characters & do some level grinding. However, this game is one of those that you can play for a few minutes just to level up your characters. Because of the experience points system, it can be too long if you have multiple party members & can frustrate many players that want to complete the game as soon as possible.
Last updated on August 8, 2007
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